I’ve just shared my idea for a Bristol based alternate-universe style adventure comic book over on Medium. A few people have expressed an interest in it actually happening and I have been interested in the inner-workings of Kickstarter for a while so I am looking in to the idea of giving it a go.

The massive flaw in my plan currently is a lack of an artist. I have the idea and have actually started to write a script (thanks to Peter David and Warren Ellis) but it is a bit hard to pitch a comic book with no art! Thus I am documenting all of this to see if it generates any interest from someone with the relevant skills!

Kickstarter is actually very helpful when it comes to guiding you through the process of setting something up. The Kickstarter School page takes you through most of the elements you need to think about;

1. Defining Your Project
2. Creating Rewards
3. Setting Your Goal
4. Making Your Video
5. Building Your Project
6. Promoting Your Project
7. Project Updates
8. Reward Fulfilment

So these are my thoughts on how I’d approach things.

Defining Your Project

The project definition is pretty straightforward. Raise enough money to produce a printed version of Bristol Fashion: a comic book adventure from the mild, mild, west.

Creating Rewards

I had a look at a few other comic book Kickstarters and I thought this might not be a bad set of rewards?

• Invite to the launch party (somewhere like the 7 Stars, Three Tuns or the Llandoger Trow.) Plus PDF of the comic.

• As above plus printed copy of the comic.

• As above plus limited edition A3 giclée print of the comic’s characters

• As above plus another limited edition A3 giclée print of the centre spread map of this version of Bristol

I’d also like to do stickers. I have this idea that the whole thing comes out under the ‘Brizzle Comics’ brand ‘BC’ which looks very similar to the old DC bullet logo and I would like to do stickers of that logo.

Setting Your Goal

Honestly I have no idea! I’m not looking to make any money from it (in fact I’d quite like to be able to make a little for charity from the idea) but there is every chance an artist would expect paying plus I am keen on using Newspaper Club and their mini-tabloids to produce the comic (digital if there isn’t much interest and traditional if there is enough.) I’d also like to use Ripe Digital to do the A3 prints as they have a great reputation and I have purchased some stuff I know they were responsible for.

I’d need to do some sums!

Making Your Video

This is one of those rare occasions where my Bristolian tones will come in to their own so I am not too worried. My plan would be to do it as a Ignite style presentation of 20 slides and record the voice over live. I’m thinking the pressure of doing it that way would make it snappy if nothing else 🙂

Building Your Project

Well I guess I am doing a lot of what they advise in this section here and now. Thinking in the open and getting feedback from the off.

The title of the project is currently Bristol Fashion: a comic book adventure from the mild, mild, west. and there will be plenty of things to link to. Coming up with an ‘elevator pitch’ for it needs a little bit more thought though.

Promoting Your Project

I’m pretty confident I could get a few people interested via social media and I can’t imagine I’d be looking for too huge a goal so that should be ok. I was wondering about seeing if there was an opportunity to do something with the guys at Excelsior Comics in Bristol or maybe some guerrilla style marketing at the Bristol Comic Expo in March.

Project Updates

Ha. If anyone can blog the crap out of a project it is me 🙂

Reward Fulfilment

This part is a bit harder to work out but one of the reasons I like the idea of working with Newspaper Club is that maybe their new ‘Newsagent‘ service could handle a lot of this? I’m wondering if I could just send out voucher codes as rewards and then people could just claim their comics from there? Don’t know yet but I am sure there is a way to take some of the strain out of this.

So what do you reckon?